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The String Figures of Yirrkala: Examination of a Legacy

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10. The String Figures of Yirrkala: Examination of a legacy Robyn McKenzie Who’s the painted cave man Who lives in Arnhem Land You’ll find it’s Fred McCarthy Tying strings around his hand.1 — Anonymous When the 1948 American–Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land was all but over and the party was taking stock in Darwin, Howell Walker, the National Geographic Society writer-photographer, asked each participant to respond to two questions: ‘What did they consider the most significant contribution to their field that the Expedition had made possible?’; and ‘What would their respective home institutions consider the most valuable work done by the Expedition?’ Frederick McCarthy, one of three ethnographic researchers on the Expedition (alongside Frank Setzler from the Smithsonian Institution and Charles Mountford, the Expedition leader), not surprisingly stated that the ‘collection of specimens’ of material culture and natural history would be most valued by his institution, the Australian Museum. For the most significant contribution to the field of anthropology, he nominated the archaeological survey he carried out in collaboration with Setzler (see Clarke and Frederick, this volume). He gave equal standing to the collection of string figures he made at Yirrkala: ‘a record number…from one group of natives.’ McCarthy described it as ‘the most complete study of string-figures yet made in one area in Australia’ and noted that it ‘increases the total to three times as many [as] previously known in the whole of the continent’.2 McCarthy’s collection of string figures—constituting by his estimate one-fifth of all ‘known’ string figures in the world at the time—remains the largest of 1 Author unknown, stanza of a ditty/song/poem, typewritten and pasted into McCarthy’s diary on 24 July. F. D. McCarthy, 1948, Diary 4, Yirrkalla Diary No. 1 and Milingimbi, Papers of Frederick D. McCarthy, MS3513/14/4, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), Canberra. 2 The questions from Walker and McCarthy’s response—both typewritten on separate sheets of paper—are pasted into McCarthy’s diary opposite the entry for 12 November. F. D. McCarthy, 1948, Diary 5, Yirkalla Diary No. 2 and Oenpelli, Papers of Frederick D. McCarthy, MS3513/14/5, AIATSIS. 191 Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition its kind collected from one community at one time.3 Commonly referred to as a game, amusement or pastime, string figures (also known by the name ‘cat’s cradle’) are patterns or designs made with a loop of string ‘by co-ordinated movements of the fingers of both hands, assisted by the teeth, neck, elbows, knees and toes when necessary’.4 While usually executed by a single person, some require two or more participants. McCarthy’s documentation consisted of three principal (separate but complementary) components: mounted figures, textual records and photographs. There are 193 mounted figures in the Cultural Collections of the Australian Museum. Made with lengths of industrially manufactured string (knotted to form a loop), the majority of the figures were fashioned by McCarthy’s principal informant, Ngarrawu Mununggurr. The final design was slipped from her hands and fixed to a cardboard or brown-paper support with small pieces of tape. Ngarrawu had exceptional skill in string-figure making. She could perform figures ‘step by step, in slow motion’, which McCarthy found ‘invaluable’ for documenting the sequence of manipulations by which a figure was made.5 These ‘instructions’ were recorded in two dedicated notebooks.6 In the Australian Museum Archives, there are 159 photographs of Ngarrawu and two male informants, Mawalan Marika and his son, Wandjuk, demonstrating designs. In assessing the significance of this collection as a legacy of the Expedition, it is important first to understand how it was seen within its original context. Why did McCarthy regard this collection one of the most significant anthropological achievements of the Expedition? Why did he consider it more important than the material culture collections—the bark paintings, for example—which have received the most attention?7 3 McCarthy, F. D. 1960, ‘The string figures of Yirrkalla’, in C. P. Mountford (ed.),Records of the American– Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land.Volume 2: Anthropology and nutrition, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., p. 422. See Martin Probert’s survey of museum holdings of string-figure materials: ‘Museum and other institutions with string figure artefacts—an inventory of string figures mounted on card, string figures on film, string figure photographs, and recordings of string figure songs’ (last revised August 2010), <http://website.lineone.net/~m.p/sf/archives.html>, accessed 1 December 2010. 4 McCarthy, F. D. 1958, ‘String figures of Australia’, The Australian Museum Magazine, vol. 12, no. 9, p. 279. 5 McCarthy, ‘The string figures of Yirrkalla’, p. 415. 6 F. D. McCarthy, 1948, Arnhem Land Expedition Diary No. 6, String-figure techniques, Yirrkalla and Oenpelli, AMS515, Australian Museum Archives, Sydney; F. D. McCarthy, 1948, Arnhem Land Expedition Diary No. 7, String-figure techniques Yirrkala, Papers of Frederick D. McCarthy, MS3513/14/6, AIATSIS. 7 See Neale, M. 1998, ‘Charles Mountford and the “bastard barks”—a gift from the American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land’, in L. Seear and J. Ewington (eds),Brought to Light: Australian art 1850–1965, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, pp. 210–17; and May, S. K. 2010, Collecting Cultures: Myth, politics, and collaboration in the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition, Altamira, Calif. 192 10. The String Figures of Yirrkala Figure 10.1 Ngarrawu Mununggurr making Lightning/Bapa string figure, Yirrkala Beach Camp, 1948 Photograph by Frederick McCarthy. By permission of Australian Museum Archives. AMS 353, Fred McCarthy Field Trip Photographs, V08961.32. 193 Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition String figures do not lend themselves to being collected in the usual sense. The whole fun of string-figure making (and its foundational ontological premise) is that you always begin and end with the dumb and inert material: the loop of string. In contrast, the constituency or ‘place of being’ of the string figure is in the animation of the string, and its transformation through movement or manipulation. As Dinah Eastop, a contemporary commentator, has written: ‘string figures exist only in the process of “making” them.’8 We need to understand therefore what it was that McCarthy was collecting, and why. It is interesting to note in this regard that McCarthy recorded the Yolngu Matha term for string figures as maitka-uma‘ ’ (his transcription of matjka-wuma).9 This is a compound term, combining matjka, meaning string and things made with string (including string figures and chest harnesses), andwuma , a verb meaning to do or make.10 Anthropologists and ethnologists considered the examination of games to be within the broad purview of studying a culture in its entirety. Since games were not considered of serious import, they were, however, often not accorded much time or space. String figures, however, were a special case. From Little Things Big Things Grow: Or a case of ‘mild diffusionism’ In ethnology, as in other sciences, nothing is too insignificant to receive attention.11 — Alfred C. Haddon Alfred C. Haddon was a major force in the development and promotion of the anthropological study of string figures. He first encountered them on his 1888 trip to the Torres Strait.12 After returning from a second tour—the 8 Eastop, D. 2007, ‘Playing with Haddon’s string figures’,Textile , vol. 5, no. 2, p. 197. 9 In this text, I use the accepted contemporary orthography for Yolngu Matha words and personal and place names. The variant original spellings of what McCarthy referred to as ‘native names’ are preserved in quotations from primary sources, such as his diaries and published writing. The term ‘Yolngu Matha’, meaning Yolngu language, is inclusive of the different languages spoken by the Yolngu people of North-East Arnhem Land. These languages are clan based, and individuals might speak a number of different languages, depending on their clan affiliations and the context. Many words are, however, similar across language groups. McCarthy’s informants would have predominantly spoken the languages of their respective clans: Djapu, Rirratjingu and Manggalili. 10 McCarthy, 1948, Diary 6, AMS515, Australian Museum Archives. The function of matjka-wuma as a compound noun+verb form was explained to me by linguist Frances Morphy (Personal correspondence, 21 October 2010). 11 Haddon, A. C. 1906, ‘Introduction’, in C. F. Jayne, String Figures, republished in 1962 as String Figures and How to Make Them: A study of cat’s-cradle in many lands, Dover, New York, p. xi. 12 Eastop, ‘Playing with Haddon’s string figures’, pp. 192–5; Haddon, A. C. 1890, ‘The ethnography of the western tribes of Torres Straits’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 19, p. 361. 194 10. The String Figures of Yirrkala famous Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait of 1898— Haddon co-wrote an article with W. H. R. Rivers (who accompanied him on that Expedition), which established a nomenclature and descriptive method for recording construction techniques for string figures. Addressing ‘the paucity of the available information’ on string figures, their object was ‘to induce field workers to pay attention to the subject’.13 By specifying standard terms for fingers, loops, near and far strings, and movements, they developed a systematic basis for the ‘scientific’ study of string figures, enhancing the potential for comparative analysis.14 Their system of notation, with some modifications, remains the standard in use today. In his introduction to Carolyn Furness Jayne’s popular guide to String Figures (1906) (an inventory of research to that date), Haddon noted that in a number of cultures there were aspects of the practice that suggested a connection with religion and mythology.
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